Supreme Court rules in 6/to-3 ruling not enough to reduce climate change

The Supreme Court has made it harder for the country to fight the ravages of climate change. In a 6 -- to- 3 decision yesterday, the court limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to prevent power plants from releasing climate-warming pollution. The court ruled that Congress had not given the agency the authority to issue the broad regulations that many climate experts believe could make a major difference - the kind of regulations that many Biden administration officials would have liked to implement. Today s newsletter will walk you through what the decision means and also clarify what it does not mean because some early commentary exaggerated the decision s meaning. The bottom line is that the ruling does not eliminate the Biden administration's ability to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Amy Westervelt, a climate journalist, summarized the decision by writing: Not good, but not as bad as it could have been. It is pretty narrow. Romany Webb of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University called the ruling a blow, but it is nowhere near the worst-case scenario. The U.S. has made little progress against climate change through federal policy in recent years. The Trump administration largely denied the problem and reversed Obama administration policies that were intended to slow global warming. The Biden administration hasn't passed its ambitious climate agenda because of the uniform Republican opposition and Democratic infighting. The Supreme Court has made the job more difficult. The Biden administration had hoped to issue a major rule requiring electric utilities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, essentially forcing them to replace coal and gas-fired plants with clean forms of electricity, like wind, solar and nuclear. The justices ruled that when Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, it did not intend to give the E.P. Such broad authority.

The ruling shows that the Republican Party is not concerned about climate change. The six justices in the majority were Republican appointees, while the three dissenters were all Democratic appointees. The Times'Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak wrote: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, glancingly alluded to the harms caused by climate change. Justice Elena Kagan began her dissention with a long passage describing the devastation the planet faces, including hurricanes, floods, famines, coastal erosion, mass migration and political crises. The math got harder. The decision made it less likely that the U.S. would reach the climate targets that Biden has set.